Police: Ohio steroid probe uncovers Tennessee lab

JoANNE VIVIANO

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — A steroid ring uncov­ered in Ohio used drugs imported from China and processed at a secret lab in Ten­nessee to ped­dle drugs to high school ath­letes and other cus­tomers with a busi­ness model that imple­mented tech­niques such as bonuses and rebates, author­i­ties said Tuesday.

A grand jury north of Cincin­nati in War­ren County indicted 32 peo­ple in the oper­a­tion on charges that include engag­ing in a pat­tern of cor­rupt activ­ity, traf­fick­ing drugs and drug pos­ses­sion, accord­ing to police and pros­e­cu­tors. Those charged include a bank man­ager, a finan­cial plan­ner, a deliv­ery truck dri­ver, a pro­fes­sional wrestler, a health club man­ager and a stay-at-home mom, and most have turned them­selves in and are being held in the county jail, said Pros­e­cu­tor David Fornshell.

Author­i­ties have seized more than $600,000 in steroids, about $300,000 in cash and vehi­cles, and a num­ber of assault rifles and other firearms, some used for secu­rity at the lab and oth­ers that appear to be collected.

James Deir, res­i­dent agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives office in Cincin­nati, called the inves­ti­ga­tion “unique” and one that led to the dis­man­tling of a drug oper­a­tion sell­ing “poi­son” to high school students.

“It’s pretty amaz­ing the amount of firearms and what this orga­ni­za­tion was doing, and that is ped­dling this poi­son through­out the coun­try,” he said.

War­ren County Drug Task Force Com­man­der John Burke said the indict­ments stem from an under­cover oper­a­tion at a local YMCA that started after they received two unre­lated tips about two years ago.

The inves­ti­ga­tion led to a recep­tion­ist at a den­tal office sus­pected of receiv­ing the drugs from three peo­ple in Ten­nessee and mail­ing them to var­i­ous loca­tions in the coun­try. Forn­shell said the recep­tion­ist, Ronald Her­bort, 45, of Amelia, also pro­vided drugs to Matt Geraci, 37, of Cincin­nati, who ran a drug-dealing busi­ness that had sales meet­ings, set tar­gets for deal­ers and offered bonuses and other types of awards and incen­tives for high sales.

Geraci also had set up a drug trans­fer loca­tion, using a bank of 18 lock­ers at an office park, where cus­tomers would retrieve drugs from an assigned locker and leave pay­ments behind, inves­ti­ga­tors said. They said he and the 18 peo­ple using the lock­ers admit­ted to traf­fick­ing steroids in Ohio, Ken­tucky and Indiana.

Of the remain­ing peo­ple indicted, police are not dis­clos­ing the names of three, who they say are help­ing in the con­tin­ued inves­ti­ga­tion. Of the rest, all are from six coun­ties in Ohio, except for one man who is from Ken­tucky. Author­i­ties said four have resolved their cases, although details were not imme­di­ately avail­able, and they said one has died of due to a heart attack attrib­uted to steroid abuse.

While the inves­ti­ga­tion focused on deal­ers, Forn­shell said author­i­ties were con­fi­dent high school ath­letes were among the users of the drugs. Burke said no par­tic­u­lar stu­dents or schools have been identified.

“We typ­i­cally think of drug abuse being done with respect to street drugs, but this demon­strates that even kids that we as a soci­ety would view as good kids can get caught up in the dan­gers of drug abuse,” Forn­shell said.

He said the Ten­nessee trio, Jason Sher­rill, 30, and Stephanie Sher­rill, 26, both of Tul­la­homa, and Ken­neth Free­man, 43, of Man­ches­ter, pur­chased drugs in pow­der form from China and mixed it into an injectable form to sell. Burke said their lab had moved from a home to a trailer about two or three weeks before it was raided by police and that agents raided mul­ti­ple loca­tions in Cof­fee and Franklin coun­ties, about mid­way between Nashville and Chattanooga.

Mes­sages seek­ing com­ment for attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Her­bort and the Sher­rills were not imme­di­ately returned after busi­ness hours Tues­day. No attor­neys were listed in court files for Free­man or Geraci.

Posted by AP News on Nov 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.